


Your Speech Is Comely

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa and Amelia meet in a book store (eventually).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Speech Is Comely

**Author's Note:**

> Additional Warnings: spoilers for seasons 5 and 6--including Lisa's mind-wipe.
> 
> Written for [the SPN Femslash Week](http://spnfemslash.tumblr.com/) and for Rory on Tumblr. Betaed by [Nonisland](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland) (thank you!)

**Amelia:**

Amelia sat on the edge of the tub in her underwear, jeans and socks and shirt puddled on the tiled floor. She turned the water hot, with no cold. Steam fogged the walls and the mirrors, scalded her flesh, made the air heavy and hot and wet, loosened the tight skin stretched across her sinuses, relaxing as god's hand, that touch she had always felt since she was a little girl, hooked deep in her nostrils, dragging her through every minute as his fingers scrabbled down across her nasal cavity, lodging so deep in her throat she could barely breathe, hardly able to speak as she just moved her lips over habitual words, mindless sound bites recorded and recited and performed on cue as those fingers stretched farther down until they clenched around her heart and lungs, squeezing until they were wrung dry.

She heaved a deep breath of oxygen and steam until her eyes stung.

When the tub was full, she fumbled with her jean pocket , found the rosary there, and whispered the Latin she had known since she was young to make the water holy and pure, accepting of no unclean thing as she lowered herself stiffly into the searing water. The rosary drifted against the bottom of the tub, the beads tangling in the webs of her toes.

She leaned over the tub, found the other pocket of her jeans, and dragged out the small bible there. The pages were filament thin, edged with gold scuffed by her fingers turning page after page. She eased back into the water, the tub bitingly cold against her sweating back.

_As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you_

She sank lower until the water lapped at her half-parted lips. She twisted the ring on her left hand with her thumb.

_People say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”_

Her lungs forced out a sharp burst of laughter, and her mouth filled with water, flooding her throat and her lungs, choking her, until she coughed it clear. Look on the TV, she had said, and you will see him there.

She sat alone in her pew these days, the hard floor cruel against her knees until they bruised, eyes unseeing as she clasped her hands in prayer, Jimmy's ring round and hard against her knuckle.

_Why have you forgotten me?_

The bath water flooded over her face and the letterings of the psalm wavered as she lowered her hands into the water, the Bible breaking the surface with a soft suckling sound, the gilded pages weak  butterfly wings as she read.

_Why must I go about mourning?_

The breath she held in her lungs began to burn as her eyes slid closed against the stinging soap scum that flecked the water, the sodden heavy Bible bumping against her chest.

Cradled by the water, almost floating, buoyed and spreading like a jellyfish in the ocean, it was easy to forget that god's hand was so heavy upon her, upon her family. Maybe, if she was without distraction, if she pulled out the mote in her eye, blinded herself so that she could truly see, fill her ears with water so that she could hear nothing but the voice of god or his angels--

her fingers scrabbled at the bottom of the tub, at her thighs as she surged upward, gasped down air cold and chilly, rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hand, rubbed the black out of them that she still sometimes saw, the voice of the demon still inside, sewn in the tissues of her ear, always there—thrumming and echoing and vibrating inside--no matter how much holy water flooded her canals and made her ears ring.

There was a sharp knock against the bathroom door. “Mom? You okay in there?”

“Yeah. Yes.” Amelia palmed her mouth.

She rubbed a towel over her skin, rubbed it raw and red and sore. Shimmied into her jeans, her t-shirt (it didn't smell like Jimmy anymore) stuck to the places on her back she couldn't reach. It was hard to breathe again—like it always was outside in the real world that had no time for prayer and was too loud to truly listen. She dropped the sodden Bible, pages flimsy and tattered, into the trash. In the day, there was no god's love, and by the night she did not hear his song. Even though she listened, listened so hard, listened harder than she ever had even as a child.

Claire stood in front of the TV. Amelia couldn't look—she could never look, not like Claire could.

“I'm going to bring him back, Mom,” Claire said. “I'm going to hunt that son of a bitch down, and bring him back.”

“Claire--” she hated that her voice was high, that it shook in her throat, and trembled in the air like something crystal and fragile, ready to shatter before anybody heard “-- you need to let him go.”

Claire muted the TV, turned to face Amelia. “No. I don't.”

“Your father said yes,” Amelia said, bit back the part where she reminded Claire that she had said the same thing. “Just like he said yes to me.” Amelia refused to blink, willed the tears to evaporate in the air.

“I didn't say yes to that,” Claire said anyway. “Nobody asked  _me_. ”

Amelia reached for her, to cup her cheeks in her palms—and Claire still winced, like she did before when Amelia's hand had slapped instead of caressed—and Amelia wanted to say that nobody had asked  _her_   either, that she hadn't asked for her eyes to flood with black, to become a stranger to Claire, to look into the mirror and see something else there, like a stain that wouldn't come out no matter how much bleach she used, how hard she scrubbed and scrubbed with salt until her skin was raw.

She ran her fingers through Claire's hair—fingers snagging in matted snarls. Like she or Jimmy could ever have let Claire go. And Jimmy would still be lost to her just like her daughter was lost to her now—a part of her given up with that single little word  _yes_.  School, practicalities like money and ability and knowledge, were the only things tethering her here, clipping the wings Claire hid in the shadows of her eyes.

Jimmy had always been her favorite.

“Do you want macaroni and cheese for dinner?”

Claire ducked from under her hand. Shrugged. Slid back to the TV, homework balancing on her knees.

Amelia squeezed her eyes shut, filled a pan with water, put too much salt in it, waited for it to boil. There had been that time, when things were still good, when she had come home and Jimmy had his entire arm in scalding, boiling water.

His skin should have been blistered. He should have been screaming.

But it wasn't. And he had said it was a test of faith, a test of god, and she--

She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand until her lids blotched with color, until they ached. It had been right there, in front of her. But he sold ad time. The first time he had heard Castiel's voice (as he described it to her), he had been stretched on the recliner, almost asleep.

She had been on her knees at Mass, rosary between her fingertips.

Amelia held her hands over the water, cupping the steam. Skin sweated, tingled, blipped that she should move to safer, colder air. But she held them there, ears strained, listening. “Are you there?” she whispered. “Are you there, God? Castiel? Jimmy? Because it's me, Amelia.”

The water roiled beneath her palms. She bit down on the thin tissue of her mouth before jerking her hand away.

“Typical,” she said.

She poured the hard noodles into the water, stirred so they wouldn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Looked over her shoulder at Claire who was chewing on the ends of her paper and, where there should be math or history or something on the paper strewn around her lap and her legs and her shoes there were words she'd never seen or heard—words that weren't even Claire's but Castiel's and she stirred the noodles savagely until water sloshed out and sizzled on the hot burner, smoking and steaming as pasta singed along its wet edges.

 _She's with me now_ ,  Castiel had told Jimmy even as the angel had said that Jimmy could go to his final resting place.

Amelia rubbed her chest over her thin t-shirt, that hook of god's fingers squeezing even though she was wrung dry, even though she had no more fruit to bear, no more fruit to give and sacrifice. Nobody had asked her if she would be alright with god taking Jimmy away back to heaven, if Claire could become an angel, leaving her alone with the sulfur still foul in her mouth, still slimed slick over her teeth and heavy on her tongue.

Claire clicked the volume up on the TV and she heard him again—Jimmy's voice that wasn't Jimmy at all, and she remembered, back when things were better, how they had looked, how they had craved to see his face, to hear him say  _hey baby_ one more time--

and now. He was around them. All the time. Look, but don't touch. The same face, but not the same being. Blue eyes looking at them, but never seeing them.

“Turn it off,” she said, her voice thin like cellophane.

She wished she knew if Claire actually didn't hear her or was just pretending not to.

Sometimes, Amelia wondered if Claire wasn't with Castiel still. Even after everything.

**Lisa**

Stretched out on the hospital bed, Ben getting something from the vending machine, Lisa struggled to pay attention to the doctor.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?”

Twenty, Lisa wanted to say. Thirty, forty, a fucking hundred. “Ten.”

The doctor rolled her eyes. “Where?”

Lisa opened her mouth to say “everywhere” but stopped mid-syllable. Because it wasn't exactly true. Her head hurt, felt like it was splitting open—but it wasn't muscular or that vein that throbbed and twitched when yoga and parenting and bill-paying pried the plates of her skull apart, tectonic migraines shattering zen and peace and calm.

It was worse.

“My head,” she just said.

“Not your neck?” the doctor said, frowning at Lisa's file before examining her with delicate touches of her gloved fingers. “It's strange—I would expect someone like you in such a car accident to have suffered whiplash but--”

Something prickled under Lisa's skin. “What?”

“You don't have any symptoms. Either you are very lucky or--” but there was no other option but the pain killers that the doctor provided didn't touch the ache. She asked Ben about the accident, but he didn't remember it all that well—that it just had happened. What kind of car? The license plate? No. Nothing. But even when the man who had been driving apologized, Lisa sucked in a breath at the nausea that flooded her stomach, at the way it flipped into free fall as she tried to smile reassuringly at him because accidents happened, tried to ignore the way her right hand clutched wildly at the sheets and her left clamped down hard on Ben's hand, like they'd both be dragged away if she didn't hold on until she found sanctuary and refuge far away from here.

But the man left, leaving them alone with the sterile hospital walls and the sharp tang of medicine drying up her throat.

“He seemed nice,” Ben said, tugging his hand out of hers.

Lisa coughed, felt a pain prick the skin of her abdomen, just there between her ribs, but when she ran her hand over flesh and bone, there was nothing—no bruises, no battered muscles.

“You okay, Mom?”

“Fine,” Lisa said. She wished she knew why it tasted like a lie.

Once the hospital released them—and the doctors were surprised at her quick release, and so was Lisa really though no one could say why—Lisa tripped over the rug in front of the door, kicked it backwards with her foot to reveal spray-painted graffiti that hadn't been there before, that didn't smell like new paint, that smelled like dust and the apple spiced air freshener she had plugged into the walls.

She traced it with her fingers, wondered how they knew where to go even though she couldn't even say the name of whatever this was, even though her tongue was poised in her mouth, pressed tight against her teeth. “Ben--” she said. He shook his head, kicked the rug back over the symbol, or tried to, but Lisa didn't move, and it folded over her feet, hard, coarse edges scraping against her ankle as she frowned down at the floor.

Her head ached, swollen with words clustered at the back of her throat. She kicked at the rug, scooped the edges up with her feet.

Ben stared at her, eyes big like he wanted to scamper off but was too afraid that she would call him back or that he would be a coward—Lisa never could tell for sure.

When the rug was kicked to the side revealing the symbol in its expansive entirety, Lisa froze, fingers flexing beside her thighs. She wanted to bleach it off her living room floor—but that emptiness in her brain nagged at her, whispered  _stop_ e ven though it didn't say why. “Fuck,” she whispered, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

But she didn't put the rug back over it before she made Ben his dinner.

If she stared at it long enough, she'd remember what it meant.

Just like she'd remember why there were bags of salt in the pantry, lines of it around the house and around the windows.

Just like she'd remember why she didn't feel inclined to sweep it up and put it away in the garage where it belonged until the winter storms.

“Maybe we're luring deer,” Ben had said. He reached out his hand to touch it, but then paused, the muscles in his hand shivering.

Lisa wondered if there was that thing in his head telling him not to touch it. Not to disturb the lines. “We can't shoot Bambi.”

Ben dipped his hand into a bag of salt, filled his palm with the gravel sized chunks of it, poured it on thicker at the windowsill. “Maybe we just wanted them to lick our hands.” He rubbed his hand over his pants, shrugged. “I've got homework to do.”

When Ben went upstairs, Lisa grabbed her laptop, sat cross-legged in the middle of the symbol on the floor. Searched for it—found it on a site that looked hardly professional or legitimate. Supposedly, it warded demons away. Or trapped them.

It wasn't very clear on that point. It was just something against all the bad in the world, supposedly.

The salt made sense, then, since salt, according to the same site, kept evil at bay.

Which meant that, without her remembering this surprising and suspicious turn of events, Lisa, who had always been an atheist for as long as she could recall, had become incredibly superstitious. “What the fuck,” Lisa said to the wall.

She rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes, turned when she heard the sticky slap of Ben's bare feet coming down the hall. He held a book in his hand with the words SUPERNATURAL:  _The Kids Are Alright_ stamped across the front. Bare-chested men posed on the covers with their guns held suggestively, shielding a woman and her kid. “Where'd you get that?” she said, holding out her arm so that he could settle in beside her.

He shrugged. “It was piled under my clothes.” He blinked, bit his lips. “It's about us.”

“What,” Lisa said. “Nobody's written stories about us.”

“But it has a Lisa and a Ben. Living in Cicero, Indiana.”

Lisa's lip twitched against her teeth, stiffened like her entire face wanted to cry and she was trying her damnedest not to let that happen.

He bent the book backwards along a well worn crease along the spine. The pages were scribbled in Ben's handwriting. “I wrote in it. About how—I felt being locked up in a cage. Like some kind of animal. And how I didn't know what to do. How...you'd never know what happened to me. If you thought I'd run away to find my biological donor parent or whatever.”

“Baby,” Lisa said, pressing her lips against the cowlick in the center of his head.

“But—I don't remember this,” Ben said, his voice high. “But I can still taste the dirt, and the stench, and how one of the other kids were with me had been sick and there was nothing to clean it up and it just.”

Lisa hugged him close, threaded her fingers through his hair. Then he pulled away. “I gotta—gotta go.” And then he was gone and Lisa let him go because she couldn't fill the empty space, just like he couldn't calm the way her heart jackaloped in her chest as she pulled out her phone, called her old friends in Cicero, asked them about it—heard the way their voices flattened out in a dead-pan—well yeah, of course don't you remember it, don't you remember those times that Katie hadn't been Katie, when the kids disappeared in a snap of fire and smoke to be returned by two men in a black Impala—the Dean, Dean Winchester, weekend of your life Dean and Lisa nodded, said the right words like  _yes_ and  _of course_ and  _I don't kiss and tell_ as she passed a finger over her lips, wondering why she wouldn't remember a thing like that.

When she finally unfolded her legs—joints aching and popping from being bent so long—she was tired, her head ached, and she hoped that she would better be able to think, better be able to concentrate tomorrow.

Figure this shit out.

But when she pulled down the covers, she found a man's shirt stuffed under her pillow. Flannel and plaid, too big for her. She bunched it under her nose, breathed the stale smell of old soap, the lingering sweat around the collar where it had stuck to someone's nape, and the scent of her own oatmeal lotion, like she actually slept with some guy's shirt—some guy whose name she couldn't remember though what if it was the man in the book, the man named Dean, and she barely made it in time to the toilet before she retched in the bowl, the words in her throat gagging her so tight she could hardly breathe.

**Amelia/Lisa**

Even though she was just wearing one of Jimmy's old forgotten t-shirts underneath her jacket, Amelia wrapped a red silk scarf around her neck to keep out the autumn chill, to match the red-gold fall of leaves. She remembered when Claire kicked at the piles she and Jimmy would rake in the yard, jump in them, toss the leaves up like confetti.

Claire'd locked herself in her room. Amelia closed her eyes, hand wavering over the door handle. She wanted to call out to her one more time – “you okay by yourself, baby” – but she didn't. Claire had shouted back that yes she would be fine— _a_ _please just go_ _implied by her tone_ —but Amelia knew that Claire wasn't alone.

They were never alone.

Angels were watching over them.

A sharp fragment of laughter burst out of Amelia's lips as she slammed the door behind her, strode towards the bookstore without driving because she wanted the scrape of the wind's teeth against her cheek, the burn of blood as her muscles flexed and relaxed as she whispered god's name to the one-two, one-two of rhythm of her boots against the sidewalk, the pinch and squeeze of leather against her toes.

When the bell chimed over the store, the old woman behind the counter glanced up from her crossword. “You the one for the Edlund books?”

Amelia nodded.

“Someone else came for them earlier. Told her they was already bought but that she could look until you came along.” She tipped chin towards the back. “By my reckoning, she should be still back there.”

Amelia nodded, licked her lips. She hadn't wanted to order them. She knew what had happened. She had read them before, returned them to the library. She knew that angels had spoken to her husband and that he had said yes and that they were god now and that that was the end of it because no angels or deities were speaking to her. But maybe if she demonstrated her faith one more time--

In the back, a box of books had been pried open, ribbons of twisted tape ripped from the cardboard stuck to the sides. Books with badly painted pulp fiction covers clustered around the feet a woman with black hair. A book was half open in her hand, her fingers keeping her place in several different portions, but she was staring upwards, tendons a tight line along the tower of her neck, at the crappy tiny square TV, the one whose screen flickered and wavered in the screen, the one where a blurry picture of Jimmy Novak but not Jimmy nor angel nor demon but god now ( _thou shalt have no other gods before me_ ) and fuck she could hardly breathe as she tugged at the scarf around her neck, barely hearing a woman tell a reporter that god was “young and—and sexy!”

The woman fumbled for the remote, clicked it off before Amelia even had a chance to ask. She snorted, shook her head.

“What?” Amelia said.

“Like they think that's really God,” the woman said. She smiled big then, dipped her head down so that her hair almost shielded her face. “But it's in the eyes, you know. That's how you know it's not really him up there. They'd probably run screaming in the other direction if they could actually see what's wearing him inside out.” And the woman squeezed her own eyes shut, briefly, before staring at Amelia.

She didn't blink because if she did she might cry, because she might remember why she never looked in the mirror, half expecting to see that shadow of blackness pooled in the pupil, like she would always be blinded.

“Lisa,” the woman said, holding out her hand, so Amelia returned the social nicety. Lisa laughed, held her book out, the one with    
The Rapture   
subtitled right under the series name. “There's an Amelia in this too—with her daughter--”

“Claire,” Amelia said. “I know.”

Lisa frowned at Amelia, then looked down at the book in her hands before rummaging in the box, tossing one of them to her. “Lisa Braeden. With my son Ben.”

Amelia caught it in her hands (she knew this one,  _The Kids Are Alright_ and it wasn't too hard to believe that if she could exist in  _The Rapture_   
that Lisa could be here and now before her in flesh and blood and bone instead of ink and paper), hardly daring to breathe as she looked once more at Lisa, at the way she leaned in her chair, knees spread wide, arms resting on them, hands clasped loosely in the space between her legs.

“It took forever to figure out what happened to me. I called up everybody involved with the printing—because the original Edlund—not his real name, obviously—disappeared. So I talked to the person in charge of writing the books now and I called her up asking what the fuck was going on, why was I in this series when I didn't remember it happening—though I was the only one apparently who just--” Lisa shrugged, lips twisting cruelly around the words-- “forgot.” Lisa leaned closer towards Amelia, folding herself over like she was coiling herself tight, and ready to spring. “And you know what she said?”

Amelia shook her head.

Lisa shook the hair out of her face, put on a high falsetto. “ _ But you were written out of the story.  How can you be here?  _ Because I've always been here, and this is my story. Even if he--” and she flicked the faces of one of the two brothers—the one that was probably supposed to be Dean Amelia realized vaguely-- “doesn't want it to be.”

Amelia kneeled beside the box. Began picking up the piles of books arranged around Lisa and dumping them in the bottom. “And who will write our stories?”

Lisa nudged Amelia with her foot.

Amelia rubbed her hand down the cover of the latest book—   
The Man Who Knew Too Much   
. “Do you know what these are called—really called? The Winchester Gospels.” She tongued her molar, gripping the book until the pages dimpled under the pressure of her fingertips. “God speaks to them. And we are left without even a by your leave.”

Lisa put her hand on Amelia's shoulder. “Come on, let me help you with that.”

“I got it,” Amelia said, but Lisa trailed after her anyway.

“Where's your car?”

Amelia put the box down, her arms already aching from their weight. “I walked,” she said. “I wasn't thinking.”

“I have a car,” Lisa said.

So Amelia followed Lisa, dropped the box in the back of the roomy Ford, and strapped herself into the front seat. Lisa drove without comment, pulling up into Amelia's driveway with a crunching of leaves.

Amelia let Lisa carry the box—mostly because Lisa didn't give her a chance to stop her—while she unlocked the door, calling out for Claire and hearing silence instead. “You want a beer?”

“That sounds great,” Lisa said.

Amelia brought out two cold ones, handed one to Lisa. It numbed her tight throat, made it easier to forget how hard it was to breathe, to speak.

Lisa slid down the wall on one side of the box, Amelia on the other side. “What are you gonna do with all these?” she said, leaving a dark path as she stroked along the spines, fingers wet from the condensation of her beer.

“I don't know,” Amelia said. “I just—” But Lisa insisted on looking at her with those big doe eyes, like she was expecting something. An answer. “They're the Winchester Gospels,” she said again, shrugging. “And I need to hear the voice of god. I need to hear it one time, at least one time, and I need it to be real.”

“But why?” Lisa said. “So that you could be up on that TV?” She tipped her bottle back. “Fix this fucked up world?”

Amelia shook her head, wondering why she was smiling and crying at the same time. Lisa got up, left her mostly untouched beer on her side, knelt beside Amelia's sprawled legs, wiped the wet way with her thumb. Amelia caught Lisa by the wrist, held her away from her, found those huge eyes, those lips that seemed to be almost waiting to smile. “So that, when an angel of the Lord comes whispering in my faithful ear, smudging up my soul with his fingertips, I can turn to him and say one, small, hard word.” She pulled Lisa closer so that she would be sure to hear. “ _No_. ” She let go of Lisa's wrist, but Lisa didn't let her hand fall to her lap. Instead she cupped Amelia's cheek, fingers strung tight in her hair, at the place where they curled around her ear.

“We would be the ones who said no,” Lisa said, her voice shaky for the first time.

Amelia's face crumpled and she pressed against Lisa’s warm palm, nodding. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah.”

Lisa combed her fingers through Amelia's hair, and it hurt a little when the nails a hit a tangle, but she didn't mind the pull-and-tug so she took Lisa's other hand, traced the lines of her palm, wondering distantly if she shouldn't be feeling an emptiness in her skin, a blankness to go with her stolen memories, but there was nothing but warm flesh, burning blood, and finely shivering muscles as she turned Lisa's hand over, rubbed the joints and knuckles, sealing the delicate spaces between bones with butterfly-soft kisses.

Lisa went on her knees, joints snug around Amelia's hips, thighs straddling her legs as she brushed Amelia's hair from her forehead, pressed her lips against the dry skin there as she cupped her jaw, thumbs stroking her cheek bones.

“It was like wandering in the desert,” Lisa said, words soft against the shell of Amelia's ear.

Amelia put her hands on the sloping planes of Lisa's hips, yoga pants slipping low.

“Not knowing—not knowing anything--” and Lisa's voice caught in her throat so Amelia palmed the hollow in the small of her back, pulled her in close. “Just—lost.” Her fingers curled in the hair at the nape of Amelia's neck, thumbs resting on the hard jut of her collar bones.

“With no one to guide you home,” Amelia said.

Lisa leaned back, scrunched her eyes closed as she dipped her head down low so that their foreheads rested against each other, hands clasped in the space between.

Amelia licked her lips, eyes sliding to the box of books beside them. “I have gasoline—saved in a red container for the lawn mower. And I have matches that I use to light the advent candles.”

Lisa opened her eyes as Amelia straightened against her.

“And we have enough fuel to burn an entire world. To have our own pillar of fire.”

Lisa rose to her feet, pulled Amelia after her. Her muscles tingled, blood rushing from where Lisa's weight had cut off the circulation, limbs warm and buttery as she pushed the box of books outside, tipped it over so that the books fell into a pile, pages crumpled paper bird-wings, spines broken and peeled back.

Lisa found the wood Amelia had chopped so that she would be forced to suck sharp autumn air into her lungs, so that her heart would pound throbbing blood into her ears, so that her eyes would memorize the rise and sweep of the axe in her hands, so that when she fell onto the bed at night her muscles would drag her down into dreamless sleep where she couldn't hear anything, see anything but the face of god should he choose to grace her existence.

Lisa gripped the logs, tossed them on the pile of books, wiped her hands against her thighs, leaving a path of dirt against the soft fabric of her pants. Amelia found the gasoline, doused the paper and the wood with it, head turned away so that she wouldn't gag on the smell.

Lisa joined her, stood close so that their knuckles brushed against each other, their fingertips whispering together. “Ready to salt and burn?” Lisa said, pulling a handful of small salt packages from her pocket, ripping off the tops, dumping them onto the pile.

Amelia nodded, sinuses aching under pressure, nose running from trying not to cry, as she struck a match, and let it drop. The pile smoked, gusting like Amelia imagined demons whispered, before the blaze caught, orange flames hissing with blue and white tongues, licking at the printed word, all consuming.

The books and wood burned—a pillar of fire and flame and smoke in Amelia's back yard.

It kept the cold at bay, and when smoky sweat pricked and itched her skin, Amelia pulled the scarf from around her neck, let it fall to her feet as she hooked up the hem of her shirt, pulled it from her arms and shoulders, bunched it between her two fists as she dropped to her knees before the fire, smoke forcing salt water to her eyes as she tossed the shirt onto the fire.

Lisa's hands, not as soft as before with her skin gritted with dirt, fell on her shoulders, kneading the muscles there before guiding Amelia to a position prone on the ground. The dying grass pricked at her bare stomach.

“What are you doing,” Amelia said, curious but not wanting to move—limbs too heavy and old and tired of waiting.

“You've tied yourself into knots,” Lisa said, pressing the heel of her hand at her neck, around the wings of her shoulder blades, at the edge of her spine.

Amelia tried to let herself relax as Lisa smoothed the muscles, eased the wooden stiffness from her back and waist as she straddled her hips.

With Lisa heavy over her, with the glow of the fire creating shifting shadows, it was easy to pretend that they were alone in the universe—floating down time and space as Amelia's eyelids fell to half mast until Lisa stopped touching, and she heard the snick of her purse opening.

She lifted her head, tried to look around even though Lisa was still over her. “What are you doing?”

“It's a surprise,” Lisa said—but she hesitated before she stretched over Amelia, her hand fumbling for the red scarf still on the ground. “May I?” she said, red scarf looped around her wrist and over her fingers as she eyed Amelia's bare stomach and shoulders flecked with dirt, tan cotton bra smeared with earth and smoke.

Amelia nodded, relaxing into the warm embrace of the blindfold over her eyes as Lisa guided her face-downwards again, her thighs sliding up her ribs as she maneuvered herself in a different position, and then Amelia felt the cold sticky drag of something against her skin—looping and lifting, scribbling and scrawling across her flesh, across her bones.

The press and lift crept lower and lower, until Lisa's fingers touched her bra strap—and Amelia nodded so that Lisa would continue, would unhook the hard metal clasps, let the material fall to the side as she continued to draw against her skin in the dying sun of a starving bonfire.

Whatever Lisa was writing tickled now as she pressed, soft and gentle, in the small of Amelia's back. “We don't get written out of stories,” Lisa said finally. “Not on my watch.” Then she rolled off, undid the blindfold.

Even though it was night, even though the fire was more smoke than flame, Amelia blinked in the light. Lisa was still clothed, but her cheekbones and forehead were smeared with mud and ash from where she had wiped at them with her dirty hands. “What did you do?”

“Come and see,” Lisa said, going into the house, Amelia beside her. They climbed the stairs to the master bathroom. Amelia twisted the knob of the shower all the way to hot before she stood in front of the the mirror, craned her neck around to see a chain of  _no_   scrolling down and across her back in red lipstick.

The pressure against her sinuses spiked, pushed the tears down—but, weirdly, it was easier to breathe. As if, without the weight of jimmy on her shoulders, it was easier to stand up straight, to duck from under the hand of god.

“It's not really a story, I know--” Lisa said, “But writing is hard.” In the mirror, Amelia glimpsed a big smile, as Lisa drifted her gaze down and up again, hand tracing an upward stroke of red lipstick.

Amelia nodded, then drew Lisa in close, her hands hitching their way under her shirt, clutching at her skin as Lisa held her head between her palms, kissed her forehead and her eyes and her mouth as the bathroom filled with steam, and their sweat mixed with their tears and washed the dirt from their skin, until they were clean and new, their lips threads of scarlet.  


End file.
